For Want of a Filter
by Lucillia
Summary: When little Bester misses out on a certain rite of passage, he becomes focused on something else and pursues it with the intensity that Bester pursues just about everything with. And, as with every universe in which Babylon 5 exists, when it comes to Bester, Garibaldi's the one who ends up taking it up the...


It would seem that in every universe, Garibaldi hating Bester would be a constant.

People who heard that would immediately speak up and say "What about the universes where Bester isn't Evil, an amoral jerk, an asshole, etc...?"

Well, aside from the fact that in most of those universes, a rogue Stephen Dexter would be making trouble by trying to settle on the station...

Let's say that we do find the near impossible, and that is a universe where Bester is a Psi-Cop and remains one long enough to turn up at Babylon 5, but isn't quite as cold uptight and amoral as most of his counterparts, such as this one for example:

Right about the time that the Alfred Bester we know and love would have said "That's anatomically impossible Mr. Garibaldi, but you're welcome to try anytime, anywhere." sounding as if he was perfectly willing to pick a fight with Babylon 5's Chief of Security, or at the very least finish the one that Garibaldi had already started, this Alfred Bester turns around and looks Garibaldi up and down in a considering manner.

"You're not what I'd generally consider my type Mr. Garibaldi." this Alfred Bester says as he grabs the Security Chief's hand. "But, your proposition is too...intriguing to pass up."

Let's just say that in this universe, the methods in which Bester violates Mr. Garibaldi are a little more er,...physical.

To understand how something like that could happen, one has to bear the fact that virtually every human being who has reached or has passed puberty thinks about sex in some way shape or form at least once during the day in mind, and if you're in a room where just about everyone is nattering on about sex in some manner, it'd be pretty damn hard not to think about sex.

Let's just say that a properly working sex filter is essential for the preservation of a telepath's sanity, and - thanks to the fact that he'd missed out on a certain rite of passage during his youth - this Bester didn't have one.

What had happened was that this Bester had been a bit more afraid of the "Grins" and much better at hiding than his usual Psi-cop counterparts. When it was time for him and his peers to do "The Walk" and he was nowhere to be found, his caretakers decided to get him later since things had been delayed long enough already as they searched everywhere for the small twelve year-old boy including the laundry chute.

In missing out on "The Walk", this Bester missed out on more than just receiving a sex filter along with his peers while they were distracted with rifling through their caretakers' memories after it was revealed that the Grins were just their teachers and caretakers in masks. He'd missed out on what would have been a defining moment of his life that would have set him on the dark path he would have ended up walking along for the rest of his life. Instead of walking away from that day with a new sex filter that would allow about 90% of people's sexual thoughts and fantasies to roll off him like water off a duck's back, a greatly reduced sex-drive that would have come courtesy of a prude who'd noticed his was kicking in already and dropped it to what they considered normal levels, a block on the few memories he had of his parents, a triply reinforced loyalty to the Corps, and a general distrust of everybody that had been fostered by what he'd seen as betrayal being revealed, this Bester came away from that day with a feeling of victory since he'd successfully dodged the Grins and hadn't been forced to march naked like everyone else in his year.

Bester probably would have gotten a sex filter soon afterward if it weren't for the random encounter with the Psi-cop. When his caretakers who'd been looking for him for hours had caught sight of him talking to the Psi-Cop, they'd assumed that he'd put in the sex filter during that conversation, and considered the job done since none of them wanted to go in and check if it was there as it would take a great deal to distract a P-12 well enough to do so without them fighting back. Unfortunately for Garibaldi, the Psi-Cop that Bester had stopped to talk to on his way back to the dorms was visiting from North America, hadn't gotten the memo on the kid who had missed out on "The Walk", didn't know Bester from a hole in the wall, and assumed he was ten based on his size.

And so, not having a sex filter and not knowing that he'd need one even if he had to make it himself, Bester got on with a life that was much like his old one except for a few things like the fact that his grades weren't nearly so good, the people he saw in the stars at night when he was a little kid longing for his parents hadn't vanished, and he wasn't quite so...repressed as he would have been.

Things progressed reasonably normally until he was fifteen, at which point the divergence became quite obvious. In this universe, the reason his age-mates from the Cadre Prime dorms hadn't seen him in over a year by the time someone who was worried about him finally goaded them into getting him out of his shell wasn't because he was fixated on his studies and his physical training to the exclusion of all else, determined to be the best and to show everyone he was the best. This time it was because Bester had proven himself smart enough to get around numerous age filters and cover his tracks afterward, and had discovered the joys of 23rd Century internet porn.

Let's just say that in this universe, when Bester ditched his friends at the train station after their hiking trip it hadn't been because of the thirty year-old woman in line ahead of him and the chance to play Psi-Cop that came with her, the reason he did so here was roughly half that age, had red hair, boobs that were nearly the size of his head, and had been checking out his ass. Either way, he'd ended up in Paris at the end of the day so it all worked out pretty much the same.

Hey, what fifteen year-old boy wouldn't go thousands of miles out of his way and risk a stint in the re-education camps if he'd thought he'd had a good chance of getting laid by a hot chick?

On the train, a security guard who would have been involved in another defining moment in Bester's life was involved in a defining moment in Bester's life, just not the one that he would have been had Bester gone on "The Walk". Bester did come to alert him that there was a rogue telepath on the train as he would have in most other universes but - being distracted with something else entirely - the encounter didn't go quite the same as it would have.

The guard who often either helped or turned a blind eye to any rogues who might be on his train for the right price had waited somewhat nervously at his post wondering if this would be the time the Psi-Cops boarded the train and discovered what he was doing. While he was doing so, a teenager with reddish brown hair came up and caught his attention.

"Hey, I thought I might let you know that there's a rogue telepath on this train." the boy said.

"There is?" he said, pretending not to know, his heart pounding as he waited for the kid to turn his back so he could knock him out before he caused any trouble for him.

"Yeah." the kid who looked antsy and impatient for some reason replied. "So, now that my duty to the Corps is done, you wouldn't happen to know how to remove a bra would you?"

This naturally threw the guard for a bit of a loop. A loop in which the easiest method for bra removal came to mind. In those moments in which the information popped up, instead of learning that entering a Mundane's mind was like being handed a plateful of shelled walnuts after one had been shelling them all one's life as most Besters would have learned, this Bester learned that you could get whatever you wanted from a Mundane by asking them a completely unexpected question.

"Gee, thanks." Bester said, turning and racing off before the guard who'd been contemplating stunning him could open his mouth to say anything.

The guard briefly considered going after the kid, but realized that it would only draw attention, attention he didn't need at the moment with Lara Brazg on the train and decided to leave it, and leave while the getting was good at the next station.

When Bester turned up in Paris minus his virginity, he encountered more minds than he'd ever encountered in his lifetime and went into a bit of a fugue state before he finally adapted. As he moved through the streets of Paris, he received an exceedingly thorough education in sex and everything related to it that he hadn't learned on the train. One would wonder how that would be, but with the number of unshielded minds that surrounded him constantly churning on every subject under the sun with "I've got to get to..." and sex being the two running overarching themes, he would've been hard-pressed not to.

As he wandered the city wondering what the hell he was supposed to do with himself since he didn't have the funds to get back home, he paused at a cafe to get something to eat because he was starving. As he was chowing down on his second sandwich, the rogue telepath from the train that he'd recognized from the hunt watch list that he tended to keep track of as a cover for his more illicit online activities, using it as something to fill the screen when anyone tried to peek over his shoulder (inadvertently disturbing several of his instructors and the dorm manager and several of his peers to no end as they'd looked to see what had the boy so hot and bothered and Stephen Walters' image was up nine times out of ten) sat down across from him.

Two seconds later, there was a commotion as she slapped the kid silly, grabbed him by the ear - continuing to slap him as she did so - and dragged him off. Less than ten minutes later when they finally met up with Portis Nielson, the man got a very surprised look on his face.

"Is that all that kid thinks about?" he asked as his compatriot continued to slap the teenager silly.

"Apparently." she replied, continuing to slap the kid despite the fact that it wasn't working because the kid had apparently been watching the wrong kind of porn recently. Hitting him had proven to be a somewhat effective method of stress relief however.

"Damn." Portis said, mentally laughing.

The MetaPol officers didn't bat an eye at what was running through Bester's mind as they came to arrest the trio. Having spent more time around Mundane teenagers than telepathic ones, they found Bester to be perfectly ordinary.

And so Bester's life went...

Sandoval Bey had tried and failed to cure Bester of his porn addiction as he'd supervised the boy while he was under house arrest at the orders of the Director who'd found Bester's little odyssey amusing, having done something similar in his youth, minus the propositioning of a rogue telepath of course.

Bester didn't betray his fiancee because she didn't become his fiancee because she thought she could do better than the male version of the Corps Bicycle.

Following his graduation from the Academy which hadn't included a romance that ended when his beloved went rogue because she wasn't his beloved, Bester went on to have a long if somewhat mediocre career as a Psi-Cop in which he hadn't been allowed to hunt down Stephen Walters because his old habit of hiding his porn behind a picture of the man had come back to bite him.

That career eventually led him to Babylon 5...

"Honestly, I can't take you anywhere." Kelsey said as she looked down at her subordinate who had been dumped at her feet with the ultimatum that he be off the station in five minutes or else.

"Do you have anything to say for yourself?" she asked as she helped the older man off the floor.

"It wasn't physically possible, but it sure was fun trying." Bester said with a smirk.


End file.
